Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday January 12, 2013 @04:54PM
from the and-5113-dollars-short dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Amazon just debuted a new service called Autorip, which grants you MP3 copies of music when you purchase the CD version. This is a technology people have been trying to introduce since 1999, but only recently have the record labels — and the courts — seen fit to allow it. 'Robertson's first company, MP3.com was one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley when it launched what we would now call a cloud music service, My.MP3.com, in 1999. The service included a feature called "Beam-It" that allowed users to instantly stock their online lockers with music from their personal CD collections. ... Licensed services like iTunes were still years in the future, largely because labels were skittish about selling music online. But Robertson believed he didn't need a license because the service was permitted by copyright's fair use doctrine. If a user can rip his legally purchased CD to his computer, why can't he also store a copy of it online? ... the labels simply weren't interested in Robertson's vision of convenient and flexible music lockers. So MP3.com was driven into bankruptcy, and the "buy a CD, get an MP3" concept fell by the wayside.'"

I totally understand that wanting a free ebook version when you buy the paper version as the digital version ads little expense once you factor in having purchased the book from an online merchant with digital distribution capability in place (assuming it was digitally stored before printing). But seriously, an audiobook version requires them to hire (hopefully good) voice talent and a studio to record the reading.

At least the audiobook is a substantive transformation that's worth paying for.

What I do is buy the deadtree version of the book and pirate the ebook - the ebook isn't a substantive transformation of the book work, just another medium of the same. At least an audiobook had effort put into it - a voice actor having to spend hours reading it aloud and some guy to add sound effects and edit the final recording.

Why can't we get copies of our ebooks when we buy the dead-tree version?

Because you they want you to buy it twice. (Unless your smart like Cory Doctorow who lets you have the ebook free to try before you buy the paper one).

Also, they're just another beast altogether (if designed with any care for the user at all): many books are published with MS Office: even complex ones. It's the de facto standard for a dead-tree industry (book publishing), and writers know its features: I remember huge reviews on how

Er..no, it's the same thing. It was written once, and typeset, edited etc. The it was a) printed in book form, and b) rendered into a pdf (or whatever). Exactly the same content. And my kindle can be read in exactly the same places a book can be, sunlight or otherwise. And when I read the same thing on my Android phone, I don't need any form of light as it's backlit. And if it were convenient/practical to print a pdf, or scan a book into a pdf I'd do that and not give a fuck about the law of it (I'm

Agreed. I have a copy of Keynes's treatise on probability, that has been so badly OCR'ed, that I can't make heads or tails of it.

Then there are a few Pratchett eBooks where the type-setting is on par with something from a second grader's attempt at using Word, the least of which is that Death, in a few sections, does not speak in small caps. If you are a fan, then you know what an atrocity that is. Actually, I think they italicized him once or twice.

My wife never bought a video cassette because she wanted a video cassette. I never bought a music casette because I wanted a cassette. Never bought a floppy drive just because I wanted a floppy drive laying around. Ditto with CD's, DVD's, ebooks, real tree books, or whatever.

It's the CONTENT you're paying for.

I want to watch the movie, or read the book. That's why I pay real money for it. The book is the same whether it appears on screen, or I have to hold the book open. The movie is the same whether it's on DVD, or video cassette. And, I only expect to pay for it ONCE to be entitled to use it as I see fit.

Even if the content is edited so that it is more usable and/or appealing in a new format, it's still the same stuff.

In an interview in the mid 1980s, an RIAA exec admitted that they were trying to get away from "selling" music and wanted to go to a "pay-per-listen" model. Mot even pay per format - they want pay per listen.

This was in the same article that he justified continued high prices for CDs, which were twice that of LPs (they were later found guilty of price-fixing) DESPITE the fact that CDs cost far LESS than LPs to produce.

His justification for colluding to fix prices to make a CHEAPER product to produce more EXPENSIVE to purchase was that it was a better value due to sound quality.

So apparently a massive increase in profit margin due to illegal activities = "a better value."

Stephen King is estimated by Forbes to make $45 million/year [forbes.com]. Now, I understand that in certain circles that isn't really considered "rich", but if that's your peer group then I think we can safely conclude that you're not going to be on welfare any time soon.

Why can't we get copies of our ebooks when we buy the dead-tree version?

I bought a book on machine learning from Manning - they do the popular "In Action" computer series http://www.manning.com/catalog/by/subject/ [manning.com] and they do give you a free non-drmed ebook (includes PDF, ePub, and Kindle) with every physical copy of the book you buy. http://www.manning.com/about/ebooks.html [manning.com] "If you did not buy the pBook from manning.com, you can still get the free eBook in all available formats by setting up a Manning account, and registering your copy."

I don't think it's a fair apples to apples comparison. Making an ebook requires additional effort. There no automatic "ripping" for books, and they require specific formatting and typesetting. Similarly, a remastered version of a movie at a different resolution is technically the "same movie", but you wouldn't claim a right to the higher definition work because you probably realize that additional work went into the creation of that content.

I don't think it's a fair apples to apples comparison. Making an ebook requires additional effort.

Only for books that don't already have an electronic version available.

Simlarly, some CD purchases from Amazon don't give you the free MP3s in your cloud drive. Sometimes it's a licensing issue, but sometimes the MP3 doesn't exist for sale at all (even though the CD does), and Amazon isn't allowed to just grab a CD and rip it for you.

Or, for some of my CD purchases, not every track from the CD was available as an MP3, even though most were.

Actually it demonstrates the flaws (from the publisher's perspective) of the traditional bookselling business model. Books (dead-tree format) are sold on consignment. They are shipped to retailers, without payment, and money comes in as retailers sell them. Unsold copies get shipped back and destroyed (which costs money). Because returns are a cost it is sometimes cheaper to discount the book just to get rid of it (even at a slight loss) without having to return it. Ebooks don't have this flaw, so there is no reason to discount them.

Not that you should be sympathetic (I'm not), but it's a little more complicated than boundless greed.

There is a very good reason to discount ebooks: there is very little cost involved in selling additional copies. Lets say I print 1000 copies of a book and sell them $20 a piece, I have $20,000 revenue. To sell more than that, I have to print and ship more, which will significantly increase my cost, so I only do it if I have a good reason to believe they will still sell for a good price.

With ebooks, let's say I publish an ebook, sell it for $20 a piece, and sell 1000 of them during the first two weeks. Then, during the next two months, I sell 5. That means nobody is willing to pay $20 for my book anymore. But there could be another 1000 people willing to pay $10, giving me additional $10000 revenue, with only a little increase in cost. Then I can sell another 2000 of them for $5 a piece, and finally I let people name their own price and sell 1,000,000 for $1 each on average.

The problem with your scenario is a marketing/awareness one. Do sales drop off after two weeks because no one wants to pay $20, or because none of the people who want to know about it? If none of the people who want to know about it, are you really going to get those bumps in sales figures for each price drop?

That may be true for hardcovers, I don't really know. But for softcovers the practice has been to rip the front cover off and send it back, while letting the retailer dump them in the trash. Same thing with magazines. I learned how it all worked as a young teenager when I discovered that once a month, the convenience store near my school bus-stop would load up the trash-bin out back with an entire month's worth of porn magazines, all missing the front covers. What they couldn't legally sell to me, I could now dumpster-dive for free.

Mass-market paperbacks are stripped and the covers returned. Hardcovers and trade paperbacks are either returned whole or they are marked as remainders and sold at a discount when publisher needs to liquidate stock.

However for the most part it's because the publishing industry is several years behind even the travesty of the Music and Movie industries. Despite the extremely public, heated battles fought and effectively lost by both the publishing industry seems bent on repeating the same mistakes step by step. The only thing working in their favor is people 'consume' far fewer books than songs. Most people won't download a few dozen books a month lik

I still tell people it was the only "digital music service" that I really ever liked. I like to buy CDs so I can transcode them into sensible bitrates for portable devices, but have a full on flac when listening at home. It was really convenient to grab a CD, toss it in the player, then have all my mp3s available instantly without waiting to transcode.

Really a shame that service got buried by the dinosaur music industry. They're slowly learning the lesson; you either adapt to the times and technologies, or you become obsolete and the only role you have is in preventing progress trying to hold on to your fiefdom. Which can't last forever.

If you look at the fact, the lesson learnt is the opposite : they were actually very able to bury a service they didn't see fit, at will, for 14 years, and they can still do so for the foreseeable future.You may wish that their fiefdom doesn't last forever, but for now, the hard fact is : it holds.

... of anyone who "ripped" an MP3 of a CD they already owned? When Napster first came out, I downloaded songs I had physical possession of media of, and kind of wondered if they could. The problem of course was the sheer temptation (all those other titles you DON'T own coming up in search)... but if someone only possessed MP3s they had physical media of, I wonder how they could be found guilty of stealing them.

For as long as i can remember iTunes has, by default, offered to rip any CD you insert into your computer. I'm sure the industry rattled their sabers and I'm just not remembering it; but I'm pretty sure that feature was never removed even briefly.

I realize other software also did CD ripping, but if the MPAA had truly believed they had the law on their side... Apple would've been an obvious target. It makes me wonder how Real might've fared had they'd held their ground on their personal DVD ripping software.

For as long as i can remember iTunes has, by default, offered to rip any CD you insert into your computer. I'm sure the industry rattled their sabers and I'm just not remembering it; but I'm pretty sure that feature was never removed even briefly.

For all I know, in the UK ripping a CD to your computer is not legal. But there will be no prosecution, ever, for various reason. One, no evidence. Two, the police officer arresting you, the prosecutor, the judge, your lawyer, they all do exactly the same thing. Third, the record industry knows that iTunes allows this (and I assume Windows and Linux software as well), so if they didn't want it to happen, did they ever tell Apple or Microsoft or Redhat to prevent it?

Auto-rip raises an interesting question about resales. It appears that Amazon is granting downloads for CD purchases (even retroactively, for CDs purchased years ago). If I've since sold the physical CD, Amazon would not know that. Furthermore, I could deliberately game the system by buying CDs and immediately reselling them.

I know, it's a stupid edge case, and I could already do this by ripping my own CDs today and subsequently selling them, but it's exactly the type of "problem" that keeps the recording industry up at night.

I think it is a this is a stement that a track of music is worth almost nothing, and so value must be added to encourage people to actually buy music. This value is that you will always have your music.

People always put for the fiction that we used to own the music. I did not own the music? if the album wore out, if the tape broke, if the CD was stolen, I was not able to get that music back for free. At best I could buy a used copy of listen to copy with generational defects. This allowed the music p

If you are willing to game the system like that, why not just download the tracks illegally? Besides, resale price of used CDs is usually far below of what you paid for them, as with most things.

You just answered your own question - because it is *legal*, and that in itself has some value. No need to hide where you got a track from, worry about prosecution for illegal downloading or keep your collection secret - Amazon offers proof you paid for it legitimately. And it's not gaming the system because of the first sale doctrine - you have a right to sell the physical CD, but since you paid for the music, the fact that you don't own the delivery medium any longer isn't really relevant.

I don't know if many people on Slashdot have noticed, but this is *not* an untimely change. Why? The price of many new CD releases is now lower than the price of an MP3 album. When Taylor Swift's "Red" album came out, the CD cost $9. The MP3 album cost $15. This is not an isolated incident.

You didn't rip anything. MP3 actually had loads of CD's already ripped and on their servers. You put in a CD in your PC, it would get some data off of it(effectively a hash) and then used that info to figure out which CD it was and allow you to stream the rip from MP3.com. So for they'd have a rip of say Led Zeppelin IV on their servers. Everybody that put that CD in their PC could access MP3.com's rip of Led Zeppelin IV and stream it but nobody who used the service was actually ripping their own copy of Led Zeppelin IV and putting it up on the MP3.com's servers.

Not with CDs though, it supposedly will scan your music library, and add it to your "cloud" for free, without actually uploading anything.

I haven't tried it yet, since I'm a bit paranoid that something that I didn't obtain legally back in college might still be hiding in my library, which will magically flag me as a bad person, so the RIAA can take all my money and leave me in a cardboard box... out of the spirit of fairness, of course.

I read about this on the BBC news website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20972027), missing the first line of the article that said it was US only, I logged into the service to see what I'd bought that was going to show up. Immediately, Beautiful South, Gaze popped up. Strange, I didn't actually remember buying it but it's possible. Then that was it. So I go through my purchases and, like others, there were heaps of popular CDs that I'd bought as gifts.

People still buy CDs? It seems that the MP3.com idea may have saved CDs... tied the license to the CD itself, so you got to buy that to get a legit MP3 license. Instead they kept their heads up their asses for 15 years and the world moved on. Artists: I can get your music for free, at any time of the day or night, from nearly anywhere in the world. I can have your entire album in under 5min. It's easier, the quality is often better, it wont get scratched, it's free, there's no taxes, it's environmentally friendly... Think of a new business model. The universe is against you on this one. Trust me.

They're always CBR, rather than VBR/ABR.They're chock full of useless tags that I don't want in my files.They're named in a clumsy way that I dislike (I don't want the artist and the album title in the file name - I have a directory structure that performs that namespacing for me much more conveniently).

2 clarifications for the summary, since I was the 10th engineer at MP3.com and worked there from 1999-2003:

- We lost to the record labels/publishers not because we gave people access to their music, but because we compiled the music library and streamed it without paying the labels/publishers any royalties. Our strategy was to buy a copy of the CD ourselves, rip it, then claim fair use doctrine when we streamed it to someone else who also owned it. This was a supposed grey area in the law that got cleared up REAL FAST in a media-friendly district court. Services that you see now are paying royalties on what they stream. MP3.com later sued its lawyers that gave the advice on the so-called "grey area" it tried to go through.

- We where not a Silicon Valley company, we where in San Diego. Perhaps if we where SV we would of gotten better legal advice:p

The problem is not that the music industry is late or that it is flip flopping on what it decides is allowable. It's their stuff and their right do whatever they want with it - copyright.

The real problem that makes this an issue is the bought legislation that grants the music (and movie and publishing) industries perpetual copyrights. This is the core issue and it must not be forgotten.

Since AutoRip applies to physical CDs you've purchased, you've already got the lossless copy at home and you are free to reproduce it in whatever format tickles your fancy. You can even store it on your Amazon Cloud Drive if you like (albeit not completely free).

Amazon AutoRip is all about having music available on the go, and is intended for normal people, not smug people, so "shitty" mp3s are just the ticket.

For years the labels have been predicting piracy will force music stores to close. Pirates predicted and even hoped for the same. But in the end, according to HMVs report, it wasn't piracy that drove their chain into crisis: It was competition from legal online media services. Mostly iTunes, I imagine.

It varies depending on the album. Recent purchases I've made have been encoded using LAME 3.97 with its V0 setting (~245 kbps VBR), this seems to be the default for MP3s encoded by Amazon. One self-published album I grabbed that was MP3 only was 320 kbps CBR. The MP3's I've downloaded via the site and via the downloader are bit-for-bit identical.

It's a pitty Amazon isn't more forthcoming on what the encoding is before you buy it, but I'd imagine whatever album you grabbed was simply provided to them as a 128 kbps file from the source.

Thank you for the info. I have no idea why my posting would have been modded "Troll" by anyone, it certainly was not a troll, it was all the information I had based on experience, their help files, AND their apparently clueless support. Overrated, sure, but not Troll.

Anyway, had support just told me that quality varies depending on the album/publisher, then I wouldn't have made such a stink. You are absolutely right that they should have a way of telling you what you are getting before you download it...

Get a refund. I purchase a lot of music from Amazon. If I dont find the quality acceptable, they always give a refund. Over 90% of their stuff is V0, about 5% 256 CBR, about 2-3% V2(or old APS), and rest are rare FGH encoded, transcoded ones and lower bitrate ones. I have send them all sort of screen shots, some proving it was transcoded from a lower bitrate to higher bitrate. They are always happy to know that they have a bad rip and take it down pretty quickly.